Discovering the new LIDKÖPING circuit

This is now a 20-year old tradition: created in 1990 by the CIK-FIA with the intention of helping to promote Karting in Northern Europe, the Viking Trophy is held in June and hosted in turn by Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. By virtue of this principle of rotation, it is the turn of Sweden to organise it on 11-13 June 2010, with a surprise in store for the participants, namely a new circuit: the Lidköping Karting Bana.  

Lidköping is a small town located in the South of the huge Vänern lake, some 130 kilometres to the North-East of Göteborg. The circuit has been entirely built according to the international standards of the CIK-FIA for Karting tracks. It is 1,250 metres long, with a width of 8 to 10 metres. It has the particularity of being anti-clockwise and of including in its course a tunnel and a bridge, as can be seen at the automobile circuit of Suzuka or on some Karting tracks recently built at Dubai or in Finland. The discontinuous radii of certain corners, some of which are also slant, add to the difficulty to master this course which will inevitably reveal the best Drivers and enhance their ability to find a good set-up for their chassis. The complex was also conceived so as to centralise the administrative, sporting and technical services in order to aim at having the most harmonious possible organisation of the competitions.

A total of 77 Drivers are divided in the three categories of the 2010 CIK-FIA Viking Trophy, notwithstanding the young Drivers, approximately thirty of them, who will compete in a national event in the «Junior/Cadet» category. As it is a race on their home soil, Swedish Drivers will have the strongest representation, with 25 entries, compared to 19 for Denmark, 14 for Finland, 10 for Russia, 8 for Norway, and there will be 1 Estonian. The category with the largest number of entries is KF3, with 34 Juniors. In KZ2, the field distinguishes itself with a large variety of chassis makes. In KF2, everyone’s attention will be focused on the Dane Kevin Munkholm, whose No. 1 bears witness to his fantastic victory in the 2009 Viking Trophy. As a reminder, after having made a clean sweep of all the preliminary phases of the event, Munkholm was forced to retire from the prefinal so he had to start almost last in the final. This faux pas had not prevented him from catching up all his opponents one by one to go and land the win!

Qualifying practice and most of the qualifying heats are scheduled for this Saturday 12 June. The last heats will take place on Sunday morning and they will be followed by the three prefinals and the three finals in the afternoon from 13h30.

Additional information and results in real time on www.cikfia.com

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